


The Sound of Silence

by maebmad



Category: The Iliad - Homer, The Odyssey - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, M/M, POV Achilles, he suffers and so do i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6103312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maebmad/pseuds/maebmad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First, Achilles dies, and then he waits. He dies with an arrow in his chest, smile on his face, and his last thought as the world tilts and the ground rises to meet his face is: I am coming, Patroclus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Silence

**Author's Note:**

> This all started with a post on tumblr--linked below--that I happened across at 1:30 in the morning. I was going to make a small addition, but alas, all my writing motivation comes in the wee hours of the morning, so it turned into this. Un-betaed, and from a sleep-deprived mind, so please point out any mistakes so that I may fix them and not drown in Eternal ShameTM.  
> destiel-is-cockles-fault.tumblr.com/post/138940358669/friendly-reminder-12

First, Achilles dies, and then he waits. He dies with an arrow in his chest and a smile on his face, and his last thought, as the world tilts and the ground rises to meet his face is: _I am coming, Patroclus._

    He waits and waits and waits, and he should not have been so surprised that death takes so long to finish, but Achilles is a patient man. Quick and patient; it is part of what made him so good a warrior, yet there is only so long a time he can be barred from part of himself, but he waits.

If he had a body, the grass would be worn from where he tread over and over, and the bed in their tent–still raised and untouched–would have such an impression of him. He does not sleep in this form, but sometimes, if he closes his eyes and concentrates, the echo of a scent can reach him, and he can pretend that his is just awakening, and that he is simply waiting for Patroclus to return from the white tent and lie next to him. Achilles is a patient man, until the moment he is not.

    “On the hill, I think. The ridge by their camp,” Odysseus says, and it is the best suggestion as of yet, but Achilles does not care. He does not care, does not care as long as it is soon, please gods make it soon. He knows how this works. They’ll meet in the underworld, find their Elysium, once the funeral rites are completed, and when that happens it will make no difference where their grave is marked. It just needs to be soon. And then his son arrives.

    _No._ It is a whisper, horrified and gasping, when Pyrrhus speaks.

    “The monument will be for him, alone.” And Achilles lunges at him, wants to pin his own son to the ground, wants to hold his sword above the boy’s throat and scream. But he cannot touch any of them. He cannot change any of this, and they just continue talking even as he cries _No! No, I will not let you take him again!_

    That boy, that boy sitting in Achilles’ seat like he has not missed ten years of war, and twice that of love, is speaking at the others around the table, and they are wary but they listen. Achilles would say he does not blame them–they are only giving respect to the son of a hero, after all–but he does. He blames them for being cowardly in the face of a boy who is demanding they go against his wishes. He blames them for not yelling and fighting this child of his who presumes to know anything of what he wished, like he himself wants to do. He wants to scream, he wants to sob, and no one can hear him so he does, he does and he does not stop because here, like this, it is the only thing he can do. Achilles has always been the strong one, the fast, the clever, the best, but here… In this veiled world that exists in the space between breaths and the moments after they end, he has none of that power. He has nothing.

    The stone is white and beautiful and Achilles loathes it. He watches the men heave it to their resting place, and cannot help but bask in their pain and tiredness as they complete the task. Evil deeds should always be hard for the men who do them. He hopes they all die, that Troy rallies behind his death and burns the entire camp before they finish it, but, he supposes venomously, he is still separate from Patroclus in that as well. He finds himself wishing anyways.

    It shouldn’t be this hard, he knows. They had always known this would happen, had been bracing themselves for years for the day when Achilles would be selfish and strong and leave his love behind for glory. It still hurts, though, and Achilles wonders how Troy built their walls so strong, wonders if he should not have consulted their builders on how to create such ones around his heart. He had always been going to leave Patroclus behind, it had always been the way things would be, and they knew it, but that had always been with the comfort of knowing they would eventually be reunited in Hades’ realm. In this, there would be no end to Achilles’ abandonment. He would not allow this, could not allow them to tear him away so permanently, but he does allow it because he has no choice. He watches them move the stone, beautiful and white, and he sobs and screams and rages, and not a single one of them pauses in their work. He is a thought that exists in none of their minds, and he can do nothing to stop it.

    He runs through camp on days when he cannot stand simply watching as they work to keep him away from Patroclus for another day, another minute, another forever. He runs through camp and screams Patroclus’ name, screams so that he may find the other in this between and see him even one last time before they are apart, and if Achilles’ still had a body that felt anything other than pain, he’s sure his throat would be raw and his voice would have given out weeks ago. There is no answer. His voice doesn’t even echo across the sands. It is there and nowhere, and then it is nowhere altogether, and he wishes he could be lost there with the words he’s cried.

    He calls for his mother, too. His feet are in the surf, in the waves and foam and salt, but the water does not break around his legs, and she does not feel him there. She does not hear his last request of her. She cannot fix this, either.

    He has ignored the grave marker for too long, and it is almost finished, now. He pounds his fists against it, and wishes they would become bloody and broken, but it does nothing to the stone or him. The scenes carved intricately in the sides are gorgeous and abhorrent and he claws at them, wishing they were a beautiful name he could run his fingers over. They show his battles, his kills, his pain and rage and wrath.

    Achilles had been born and bred for blood and death, and he never had much issue with this way of things. Blood and death lined the roads that lead to glory and heroism, and he had reveled in it before it had become acquainted so intimately. Now, he thinks, if this is how they are going to write his story, his achievements, it seems woefully incomplete. They carved what he had done, they carved how he had done it, but Pyrrhus had ensured that they would not be carving anything about why he had done any of it. All of the love and pain of why was missing, and Achilles snarls at the monument that will seal their fate and thinks if all of it were gone, if all they had on his grave were a name that gave him his why of life, it would be better a tribute to him than any battle and blade.

    Then they are finishing it, and Achilles is screaming and crying and raking nails down each letter formed, but this world is not his to touch any longer–he must watch as his name takes shape, and feel as he is pulled below the earth. He is clawing at stone and ground, not wanting to go when he is leaving so much of himself behind. He is still sobbing and Patroclus is the last word he leaves hanging in air of the world he is torn from. He wishes he could have said more, there is so much more to tell, and yet, somehow with it he has said everything he could possibly say. If only someone were around to hear.

    Then, he is in death, and the Styx is there for him to cross, Elysium is there for him to rightfully claim. He does not. He cannot bring himself to let go of the last piece of life he has, cannot bring himself to cross the river into the kingdom of death. He would be severing his last ties to the world above, his last ties to where Patroclus is, and this is something he cannot bear to do.

He considers it a few times–crossing, that is–if only to reach the Lethe and rid himself of all this burden, the burden that will never leave. He almost does it. He almost throws it all away, because he cannot stand the atlassian feeling of this world of them he bears on his shoulders. But Patroclus is not alive, and he is not fully dead. He is in some nowhere in between, denied what peace is rightfully his, and will be forgotten by man because of this. He will be forgotten by those who fought with and against him and by the gods and by history. Achilles cannot do him the disservice of forgetting him as well. All that is left of Patroclus in either of the worlds is memories. Patroclus is made of the memories Achilles has of him, and Achilles will not let him be unmade, will not be the one to unmake him. Achilles does not cross over the Styx.

He does not know how long has passed–years, perhaps decades–when he sees an old familiar face. One he had expected to see at some point, as many soldiers he had fought with had passed through here before, but this one does not show up in the way he expects. Odysseus is not dead, though he has come close on many occasions. He is much older, and worn and especially in comparison to Achilles, preserved forever in all his golden youth, but he is alive and tells briefly of how highly Achilles is spoken of now, how he is a prince of the dead. Odysseus, for once perhaps unwisely, tell Achilles that he should not be so upset by the happening of things.

“Say not a word,” Achilles snarls at the old man, “in death’s favor.” Achilles thinks of two paths that had been laid before him, so many years and years and memories ago: one of short life and glory, the other long and withering. It had seemed so obvious before, to live short and bright. It had seemed so obvious but yet now Achilles mind conjures an image of him and Patroclus on Mount Pelion, or in a field, or back in the palace in Phthia, grown and gray. In this image, Achilles is no longer strong, not longer quick, he has lost all of the gifts that were to make him the legend he is now, but in all of these visions, he is beside his other half, and there is not a single thought of him alone. Achilles lets himself imagine, for just a moment, what it might have been like to not follow the path of war, to stay on Scyros and race down the beach, and have Patroclus be his husband, and nobody argue with the sentiment, even when he is not in a dress. He lets himself imagine, and then he does not, because that path had been left at the fork at which it began, and though Achilles is not sure where it would end, he is sure it is as far from where he is as it could get. “I’d rather be servant to another man and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead.”

Achilles walks away from his old war companion not long after, their words echoing in his mind, and he sits at the edge of the river bordering death in the dark, and again he waits and waits. He does not know what he is waiting for, and whereas he used to spend his extra minutes composing music on the lyre that would make Patroclus smile, softly close his eyes, and tilt his head to the sound, now he waits in the silence of night and rushing water. A silence that is not quiet, but one that is still empty and hollow. Perhaps that is what he is waiting for; a song he knows will never come, and a melody that will never be plucked out on strings and played. There are, he comforts himself tiredly, worse things to wait for, and he watches the barred gates of Hades for the notes to come to him.

It has been minutes or centuries but they do. His song arrives in a burst of light and sun and music and warmth, and there is a hand on his and then a mouth on his and a body on his and they are two and one at the same time. The song rings through the air, and Achilles jaw hurts from where he grins into their kiss–an expression he has not made since he was flesh and blood and love–and he hopes the world above can hear how beautiful it is as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Part of this is that I’ve always wanted to write a tsoa fic with the part in the Odyssey where Odysseus talks to Achilles’ ghost, and his quotes about the lifeless dead, because whereas the Odyssey claims that Patroclus’ ghost was there too, I can’t help but think that Achilles’ attitude makes much more sense in context of tsoa if Patroclus isn’t there yet hence, pain  
> Anything you recognize is probably a reference to or direct quote from tsoa or the Odyssey. Obviously I don’t own either of these works, though that would be pretty cool


End file.
